There are such things a simple models for chairs,trees and other simplistic "props" that can be bought or licensed(money). However, the technology for consoles isn't really stable enough to simply plug them in, generally speaking. Many will sell you models in 3D Studio/lightwave/maya/whateverstrendy format, but your game, in order to push the machine to process more polys must have it's own format for storing/streaming these models. Well now you've got to write something that translates the models(money wasted). If you're lucky, there's some scriptable export plugin you can use. If not, you roll your own, which takes time(even more money wasted).
Ok, so now you can use the models in your games, but things don't look *quite* right anymore, due to your fancy new engine. Maybe your new engine has these incredibly nifty light glares, but the models you bought already compensated for the "poor man's" engine, which didn't have such. Now you have an overly-bright chair. No problem, I'll just tweak each model. It'll just take some guys(money) a little time(money multiplier) to 'tweak' them.
So the shifting target of performance isn't that cut and dry, and you may be better off just recreating the damn chair yourself.
Great link my friend. With the exception of the lack of optical drive, that looks perfect. The problem is, how much are they going to charge for one of those? If it's reasonable, I would definetly bump up my research of the Via C3s and make that my next project.
When I read the title I thought that this article would feature some nifty non-pc like designs. Wrong. They're just SFF PCs, some with a hide-away drive bay, except for possibly the last one which has some artistic curves.
I've built two mythboxes now. The first is of the Shuttle G2 variety, which works nicely, but still looks very PC. The one I built for the girlfriend is a much prettier ASUS Pundit which is very aesthically pleasing. It's not "booksize" as advertised (unless you read books twice the thickness and length of a hardcover), but it's the smallest full-featured case I've found. Too bad the card reader isn't Linux supported and doesn't have all the card types available.
What we really need is an article on very tiny (mini-itx preferably) motherboards and cases. I need something without fans, because most fans are distracting. The two I have are minimal, but if you strain it can definetly be heard. The Via chipset looks promising, and the almost fanless 1Ghz Epia Nehemiah motherboard might fit the bill, but I'm not sure how well supported the architecture is supported in Linux.
In researching my post here, I stumbled across Shuttle's latest M1000 offering. That looks pretty sweet, but I haven't done my due dilligence on Linux compatibility yet.
So, if someone could review the prettiest, smallest, fanless (and throw in cheapest too) HTPC case/motherboard combos, it would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. Till then, I'll browse http://www.mini-itx.com/ from time to time.
Good point. I remember in my high school daze we had a bunch of trench-coated always-wear-black goths. Of course there is much more hear than the sound bytes you hear on the news. Apparenty there had been a website documenting the depths of one of the boys problems since at least '97. I am not in any way saying that these things caused the incident, I just never put it all together noticed how close these things were in time.
He could have shot up the school with ray-bans on and beckoning "Mr. Smith" to come fight him, I'd still say the problem was that the kid was screwed up. If movies and games can effect you like that, it's not the movies and the games that are the problem.
...except for the controller. (Which, uh, is "not so good" (tm) )
I still don't understand why most don't like the cube's controller. When I first saw it I thought it was an absolute nightmare, but if you actually *use* the thing it's far superior than the XBox or PS2 controllers.
Most importantly, all the buttons on the cube controller have a distinctive shape. I can't tell you how many times I've had to stop in mid-game on the other consoles to figure out which is the "XO Triangle/Black" whatever. The cube has an X button on the X axis, centered on a large A button, with the B button significantly smaller. Both analog sticks have ridge cutouts on the eight primary directions, making for easy distingushing of analog directions. The triggers are large, and 'click' at maximum pressure. All this tactile feedback is missing on the other console offerings.
Maybe the Dual Shock is more comfortable, I don't think so but many do, but is that enough to overcome Nintendo's no-memorization design?
At first I wanted to state that Columbine happened way before "The Matrix". Upon further cursory inspection, it looks like the Columbine massacre happened less than a month after the theatrical release of "The Matrix". I never realized how close these two events really were. Interesting.
I just bought a brand spanking new LCDTV. Of course, as I'm accustomed, a good 1/4 of the manual was dedicated to the V-Chip function. Never mind explaining how the Clock/Phase on the VGA input works. Anyway I have *never*, and I mean *ever* met *anyone* who used the (mandatory in the U.S.) V-chip.
My personal favorite? If you forget the parental code for the unit, you must put in the 'secret' code. Which is, I shit you not, 0... 0... 0... 0. See the documentation (page 26 of the PDF).
If that means something to you, the fact that you will "have" an XBox360, then so be it. What the grandparent post states is logical reasoning. If you are gaming less than an hour a day, it's very likely that the current generation has a multitude of gaming experience that you haven't tried and will likely miss out on as you spend your money on 360 games. If you have a choice between a 360 game, which will showcase your fancy new system, and an XBox game that will play on your 360, I think your dollars will go to the shiny. The *only* benefit you'll have buying on day one is that you'll "have" a 360.
That said, if you're into the conspicuous consumption thing, I'm not going to stop you. Have fun and I hope you enjoy it. Me, I've still got a least 10 games (bought for less than $20) for my cube, ps2, and current XBox that will occupy me until the new generation dust settles.
Yeah, eight months or so. Depends on your definition of "early."/. already covered gamespots "360 as dreamcast" though, so at least here, your actually late.
I've been using Myth for well over a year now. How can this used as a remote for it? That would be interesting, and many people seem to comment on it, but I don't see how another computer can remotely control the playback. I have wireless keyboard, and I *suppose* I could somehow "fake" lirc keypresses, but is there a better application that I don't know about?
Thank you for reminding people that some acronyms are now words, like laser and radar. I would also like to eliminate lazer from the dictionary of America. Thanks.
Read the bottom of the page. It's a work of parody, fully lawful in the U.S. That's why you can have Saturday Night Live product/commercial spoofs. It's a crack in the law that allows us to continue our normal lives without fear of being sued if we say "Pepsi" in a sentence.
I did the same thing. Waited for LCS to upgrade to 2.0. You can adjust the web browser so most pages look fine. Some pages however (and/. is one of them) take forever to load though. As for the memory, you can bump the cache from 512 to 2048 and that limits the out of memory errors. Although you still get them. A lot. Shame really, it's *almost* a perfect on the go browser, but the small flaws get magnified by their frequency.
The text entry 'fix' I've found is to use the PSP Virtual Keyboard. Not a perfect solution, but it helps.
Thank god for dupes, so I can get a second bite of this apple. A lot of us posting on this topic will say "it's the gameplay stupid." Well, it is, and it's not. The one simple problem is that you cannot put your gameplay on the back of a box. That's where a significant percentage of consumers get their info. Gameplay is too abstract a thing to depict to your average consumer in the 5 seconds of attention they will give you. A pretty picture however, grabs attention and is the easiest way to compare your game to others. Until gaming is more widespread in our culture, and commercials somehow depicting gameplay become more prevalent, shiny will sell first.
Call it misspoken. If he had said, "the phyical properties of silicon" then he would have been correct. He's even smarter than I. I knew that lead (Pb), for example, has the physical property of being a solid at room temperature. Unbeknownst to me, silicon (Si) apparently has the physical property of resisting MS game console production.
Thank god fanboys (Fb) have an electrochemical weakness which causes them to be attracted to all things new and shiny.
Perfect point, and I agree totally, but I have to ask...
"..streamed all the content from the disc (sort of like GTA does I guess)...couldn't stream the data from the DVD fast enough"
Then how does GTA do it on a slow ass DVD drive, with a pretty anemic amount of memory? That doesn't sound like a good omen for the XBox's technical prowess. Sounds like someone doesn't want to take the time to write smart precaching algorithms in order to meet a deadline. Yes, I know the PS2 doesn't do it in high-def, but the XBox360 will easily be an order of magnitude more powerful than the current PS2 as far as pushing polys, memory capacity (and bandwidth) and flat out drive speed. If the 360 will render beautiful worlds that we must stop and admire the SPEED LIMIT SIGNS in then something, somewhere, ain't right.
Unlike most of my sibling posters I get your point, and have banging my drum on it for awhile. Yes, developers used the HDDs as an easy way to precache data, but that's not using the HDD. Yes, you can save uberloads of games but that's also not what we mean. You can buy a big mem card for a PS2 and I've never had a loading issue on my Gamecube, *ever*. What those systems *don't* have, is a built in area of massive storage for downloadable content, or allow you to have an entire world saved as part of your game. The xbox could do that sort of thing, but never really did.
Point being, the XBox was innovative in that it was the first console to ever feature such a large, fast dedicated local storage. Possibilities abounded, yet no one did anything significant with it.
It's good to see that you're open to the idea. Of course Nintendo has already shown people that crazy bobbing and weaving is unecessary, and you need barely move your wrist to control a game. However, the larger point is that what Nintendo is producing is a level of *interaction* that we have not had before. If you've watched the video, watch the man moving the controller in and out of the screen, concentrating. As an example, say you're playing your favorite FPS and part of your mission involves disarming a bomb. You must go from wildly firing waves of bullets every which way to clear a path of enemies, to immediately having to use precise movements to manipulate tiny wires, and at the slightest twitch, you're done.
Contrast this to how such a scene would have to be enacted on current consoles. To defuse the bomb you would either be moving a cursor with an analog stick or randomly pressing a certain "key" combination of buttons. It's just not the same feeling, and the difference is that the Revolution approach *feels more like* the action you are performing on screen.
I honestly feel that when Nintendo unveiled the new controller, home video games changed as we know it. Pretty much everyone, even the most die hard fan boys on all sides had to take a step back. Saying to themselves, "what the hell have we be doing these last few years?" Even your average joe consumer can't really think of a reason to buy the new XBox or PS2 aside from hi-def.
I think right now, both Sony and Microsoft are seriously watching Nintendo. There are tons of meetings going on right now analyzing what people *may* want. This is diametrically opposed to the way we've been doing it, which is "give them what sold last time, but prettier and with some minor new features."
I own all consoles currently out, and they each have their own advantages. However, I'm grinning ear to ear at what Nintendo has done to the industry. It's much like when photography was first invented. Painters were suddenly unecessary, as photos were quicker an more realistic. It took Picasso and other outstanding artists to show what painting could bring to the world that photos could not. I've used this analogy before, but never has it seemed more appropriate.
As for MS and Sony (to a lesser extent), they have already entrenched themselves in their battlegrounds, there is little that can be done to go back. Only time will tell if they are in the right war.
The truth, as I recall, was that someone was coughing during the audio takes for the Grievous scenes, which only showed up on review. Lucas however liked the idea, made the machine seem more real or sumsuch and edited it in. I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere. Anyone that could back me up here is much appreciated.
It doesn't matter, because on the DVD he doesn't cough, and actually Grevious is bohemian-bot, the arch-nemesis of all protocol droids. I swear. I read it on the intar-web.
Slashdot Mirror
There are such things a simple models for chairs,trees and other simplistic "props" that can be bought or licensed(money). However, the technology for consoles isn't really stable enough to simply plug them in, generally speaking. Many will sell you models in 3D Studio/lightwave/maya/whateverstrendy format, but your game, in order to push the machine to process more polys must have it's own format for storing/streaming these models. Well now you've got to write something that translates the models(money wasted). If you're lucky, there's some scriptable export plugin you can use. If not, you roll your own, which takes time(even more money wasted).
Ok, so now you can use the models in your games, but things don't look *quite* right anymore, due to your fancy new engine. Maybe your new engine has these incredibly nifty light glares, but the models you bought already compensated for the "poor man's" engine, which didn't have such. Now you have an overly-bright chair. No problem, I'll just tweak each model. It'll just take some guys(money) a little time(money multiplier) to 'tweak' them.
So the shifting target of performance isn't that cut and dry, and you may be better off just recreating the damn chair yourself.
Great link my friend. With the exception of the lack of optical drive, that looks perfect. The problem is, how much are they going to charge for one of those? If it's reasonable, I would definetly bump up my research of the Via C3s and make that my next project.
When I read the title I thought that this article would feature some nifty non-pc like designs. Wrong. They're just SFF PCs, some with a hide-away drive bay, except for possibly the last one which has some artistic curves.
I've built two mythboxes now. The first is of the Shuttle G2 variety, which works nicely, but still looks very PC. The one I built for the girlfriend is a much prettier ASUS Pundit which is very aesthically pleasing. It's not "booksize" as advertised (unless you read books twice the thickness and length of a hardcover), but it's the smallest full-featured case I've found. Too bad the card reader isn't Linux supported and doesn't have all the card types available.
What we really need is an article on very tiny (mini-itx preferably) motherboards and cases. I need something without fans, because most fans are distracting. The two I have are minimal, but if you strain it can definetly be heard. The Via chipset looks promising, and the almost fanless 1Ghz Epia Nehemiah motherboard might fit the bill, but I'm not sure how well supported the architecture is supported in Linux.
In researching my post here, I stumbled across Shuttle's latest M1000 offering. That looks pretty sweet, but I haven't done my due dilligence on Linux compatibility yet.
So, if someone could review the prettiest, smallest, fanless (and throw in cheapest too) HTPC case/motherboard combos, it would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. Till then, I'll browse http://www.mini-itx.com/ from time to time.
Good point. I remember in my high school daze we had a bunch of trench-coated always-wear-black goths. Of course there is much more hear than the sound bytes you hear on the news. Apparenty there had been a website documenting the depths of one of the boys problems since at least '97. I am not in any way saying that these things caused the incident, I just never put it all together noticed how close these things were in time.
He could have shot up the school with ray-bans on and beckoning "Mr. Smith" to come fight him, I'd still say the problem was that the kid was screwed up. If movies and games can effect you like that, it's not the movies and the games that are the problem.
...except for the controller. (Which, uh, is "not so good" (tm) )
I still don't understand why most don't like the cube's controller. When I first saw it I thought it was an absolute nightmare, but if you actually *use* the thing it's far superior than the XBox or PS2 controllers.
Most importantly, all the buttons on the cube controller have a distinctive shape. I can't tell you how many times I've had to stop in mid-game on the other consoles to figure out which is the "XO Triangle/Black" whatever. The cube has an X button on the X axis, centered on a large A button, with the B button significantly smaller. Both analog sticks have ridge cutouts on the eight primary directions, making for easy distingushing of analog directions. The triggers are large, and 'click' at maximum pressure. All this tactile feedback is missing on the other console offerings.
Maybe the Dual Shock is more comfortable, I don't think so but many do, but is that enough to overcome Nintendo's no-memorization design?
At first I wanted to state that Columbine happened way before "The Matrix". Upon further cursory inspection, it looks like the Columbine massacre happened less than a month after the theatrical release of "The Matrix". I never realized how close these two events really were. Interesting.
Yeah a presentation of awards by animated characters. That could never be anything but cool.
Not to be too l33t, but "Funniest story EVAR!!!one"
I just bought a brand spanking new LCDTV. Of course, as I'm accustomed, a good 1/4 of the manual was dedicated to the V-Chip function. Never mind explaining how the Clock/Phase on the VGA input works. Anyway I have *never*, and I mean *ever* met *anyone* who used the (mandatory in the U.S.) V-chip.
... 0 ... 0 ... 0. See the documentation (page 26 of the PDF).
My personal favorite? If you forget the parental code for the unit, you must put in the 'secret' code. Which is, I shit you not, 0
If that means something to you, the fact that you will "have" an XBox360, then so be it. What the grandparent post states is logical reasoning. If you are gaming less than an hour a day, it's very likely that the current generation has a multitude of gaming experience that you haven't tried and will likely miss out on as you spend your money on 360 games. If you have a choice between a 360 game, which will showcase your fancy new system, and an XBox game that will play on your 360, I think your dollars will go to the shiny. The *only* benefit you'll have buying on day one is that you'll "have" a 360.
That said, if you're into the conspicuous consumption thing, I'm not going to stop you. Have fun and I hope you enjoy it. Me, I've still got a least 10 games (bought for less than $20) for my cube, ps2, and current XBox that will occupy me until the new generation dust settles.
"... followed by nothing for 6-9 months when no impressive games are released."
So I should be getting my impressive PSP games about now?
Yeah, eight months or so. Depends on your definition of "early." /. already covered gamespots "360 as dreamcast" though, so at least here, your actually late.
I've been using Myth for well over a year now. How can this used as a remote for it? That would be interesting, and many people seem to comment on it, but I don't see how another computer can remotely control the playback. I have wireless keyboard, and I *suppose* I could somehow "fake" lirc keypresses, but is there a better application that I don't know about?
"they can wear pretty pink dresses if they want, and still kick ass."
I bet you'd like that wouldn't you?
Thank you for reminding people that some acronyms are now words, like laser and radar. I would also like to eliminate lazer from the dictionary of America. Thanks.
Read the bottom of the page. It's a work of parody, fully lawful in the U.S. That's why you can have Saturday Night Live product/commercial spoofs. It's a crack in the law that allows us to continue our normal lives without fear of being sued if we say "Pepsi" in a sentence.
I did the same thing. Waited for LCS to upgrade to 2.0. You can adjust the web browser so most pages look fine. Some pages however (and /. is one of them) take forever to load though. As for the memory, you can bump the cache from 512 to 2048 and that limits the out of memory errors. Although you still get them. A lot. Shame really, it's *almost* a perfect on the go browser, but the small flaws get magnified by their frequency.
The text entry 'fix' I've found is to use the PSP Virtual Keyboard. Not a perfect solution, but it helps.
Thank god for dupes, so I can get a second bite of this apple. A lot of us posting on this topic will say "it's the gameplay stupid." Well, it is, and it's not. The one simple problem is that you cannot put your gameplay on the back of a box. That's where a significant percentage of consumers get their info. Gameplay is too abstract a thing to depict to your average consumer in the 5 seconds of attention they will give you. A pretty picture however, grabs attention and is the easiest way to compare your game to others. Until gaming is more widespread in our culture, and commercials somehow depicting gameplay become more prevalent, shiny will sell first.
Call it misspoken. If he had said, "the phyical properties of silicon" then he would have been correct. He's even smarter than I. I knew that lead (Pb), for example, has the physical property of being a solid at room temperature. Unbeknownst to me, silicon (Si) apparently has the physical property of resisting MS game console production.
Thank god fanboys (Fb) have an electrochemical weakness which causes them to be attracted to all things new and shiny.
Perfect point, and I agree totally, but I have to ask...
"..streamed all the content from the disc (sort of like GTA does I guess)...couldn't stream the data from the DVD fast enough"
Then how does GTA do it on a slow ass DVD drive, with a pretty anemic amount of memory? That doesn't sound like a good omen for the XBox's technical prowess. Sounds like someone doesn't want to take the time to write smart precaching algorithms in order to meet a deadline. Yes, I know the PS2 doesn't do it in high-def, but the XBox360 will easily be an order of magnitude more powerful than the current PS2 as far as pushing polys, memory capacity (and bandwidth) and flat out drive speed. If the 360 will render beautiful worlds that we must stop and admire the SPEED LIMIT SIGNS in then something, somewhere, ain't right.
Unlike most of my sibling posters I get your point, and have banging my drum on it for awhile. Yes, developers used the HDDs as an easy way to precache data, but that's not using the HDD. Yes, you can save uberloads of games but that's also not what we mean. You can buy a big mem card for a PS2 and I've never had a loading issue on my Gamecube, *ever*. What those systems *don't* have, is a built in area of massive storage for downloadable content, or allow you to have an entire world saved as part of your game. The xbox could do that sort of thing, but never really did.
Point being, the XBox was innovative in that it was the first console to ever feature such a large, fast dedicated local storage. Possibilities abounded, yet no one did anything significant with it.
I had to laugh at that statement. I love MS just for the debate they constantly ensue. How does Microsoft even think about money anymore?
"Oooh, we lost a few hundred million on the xbox, that's sad."
"How much are are we going to make on Office products alone next year?"
<I-draw-with-oatmeal-cookies-type insane laughter>
"Really? I couldn't even write that on a piece of paper without turning it sideways. That's if I could figure out how many zeros that is."
"So Bob, how goes the purchase of Venus?"
It's good to see that you're open to the idea. Of course Nintendo has already shown people that crazy bobbing and weaving is unecessary, and you need barely move your wrist to control a game. However, the larger point is that what Nintendo is producing is a level of *interaction* that we have not had before. If you've watched the video, watch the man moving the controller in and out of the screen, concentrating. As an example, say you're playing your favorite FPS and part of your mission involves disarming a bomb. You must go from wildly firing waves of bullets every which way to clear a path of enemies, to immediately having to use precise movements to manipulate tiny wires, and at the slightest twitch, you're done.
Contrast this to how such a scene would have to be enacted on current consoles. To defuse the bomb you would either be moving a cursor with an analog stick or randomly pressing a certain "key" combination of buttons. It's just not the same feeling, and the difference is that the Revolution approach *feels more like* the action you are performing on screen.
I honestly feel that when Nintendo unveiled the new controller, home video games changed as we know it. Pretty much everyone, even the most die hard fan boys on all sides had to take a step back. Saying to themselves, "what the hell have we be doing these last few years?" Even your average joe consumer can't really think of a reason to buy the new XBox or PS2 aside from hi-def.
I think right now, both Sony and Microsoft are seriously watching Nintendo. There are tons of meetings going on right now analyzing what people *may* want. This is diametrically opposed to the way we've been doing it, which is "give them what sold last time, but prettier and with some minor new features."
I own all consoles currently out, and they each have their own advantages. However, I'm grinning ear to ear at what Nintendo has done to the industry. It's much like when photography was first invented. Painters were suddenly unecessary, as photos were quicker an more realistic. It took Picasso and other outstanding artists to show what painting could bring to the world that photos could not. I've used this analogy before, but never has it seemed more appropriate.
As for MS and Sony (to a lesser extent), they have already entrenched themselves in their battlegrounds, there is little that can be done to go back. Only time will tell if they are in the right war.
The truth, as I recall, was that someone was coughing during the audio takes for the Grievous scenes, which only showed up on review. Lucas however liked the idea, made the machine seem more real or sumsuch and edited it in. I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere. Anyone that could back me up here is much appreciated.
It doesn't matter, because on the DVD he doesn't cough, and actually Grevious is bohemian-bot, the arch-nemesis of all protocol droids. I swear. I read it on the intar-web.